As computer operating environments have evolved, a number of character encoding schemes have been developed to account for varying linguistics requirements. Character encoding schemes such as SBCS (Single-Byte Character Set), DBCS (Double-Byte Character Set) and MBCS (Multi-Byte Character Set) have been widely utilized to support unique character schemes. The range of encoding schemes has resulted in inter-operability issues such as document conversion errors when converting documents to different unique character sets supported by each computer operating environment. In order to address the problems that have resulted from maintaining unique character encoding schemes, the Unicode character encoding was developed as a single character encoding scheme and has become a standard for many current operating environments.
The proliferation of newer computer operating environments based on the Unicode character encoding scheme, and the fact that a large number of computer operating environments and programs still utilize non-Unicode (SBCS, DBCS, MBCS) encoding schemes, has created technical challenges when programs and documents are transferred between different types of computer operating environments.
One such challenge arises when documents from structured programming languages such as RPG (Report Program Generator), DDS (Data Description Specification) and COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) are converted between Unicode and non-Unicode encoding schemes. The process of document conversion between the encoding schemes, can impact the integrity of field definitions and data contained within the fields, which are executed and utilized by a programming language such as RPG. The field definitions are important to the proper execution of programming languages and the integrity of the data contained within them must be maintained. Similar difficulties arise when a document (e.g., in RPG, DDS, or COBOL) is being actively processed (e.g., creating, inserting, editing, deleting, and formatting) in a first system (e.g., in a Unicode editing system) that is targeted for ultimate processing by a second system (e.g., a non-Unicode environment such as DBCS).
There is a need to provide tools that enable a user, when processing a non-Unicode based document, in a Unicode computer operating environment, the ability to identify/manage problems in document structure and functions.